‘Holidays.’ I stepped back behind Yoshi, a little embarrassed. Lance always talked to me like I was five years younger than I was.
‘She’ll stay out of sight,’ Yoshi said. ‘She just wanted to see the dolphins.’
I stared at him, pulling my sleeves down over my hands.
He stared back, then shrugged. ‘You gonna wear a lifejacket?’
I nodded.
‘And not get under my feet?’
I tilted my head. As if, my eyes said.
‘Be nice to her,’ said Yoshi. ‘She’s been ill twice already.’
‘It’s nerves,’ I said. ‘My tummy always does it.’
‘Ah . . . Hell. Look, just make sure your mum knows it was nothing to do with me, okay? And listen, Squirt, head for Moby Two next time – or, even better, someone else’s boat.’
‘You never saw her,’ said Yoshi. ‘Anyway, Greg’s steering’s not the half of it.’ She grinned. ‘Wait till he turns and you see what he’s done to the side of his prow.’
It was, Yoshi said, as we headed back out, a good day to be on the water. The sea was a little choppy, but the winds were mild, and the air so clear that you could see the white horses riding the little breakers miles into the distance. I followed her to the main restaurant deck, my legs easily absorbing the rise and fall of the catamaran beneath me, a little less self-conscious now that the skipper knew I was on board.
This, she had told me, would be the busiest part of today’s dolphin-watching trip, the time between setting off and our arrival at the sheltered waters round the bay where the pods of bottlenoses tended to gather. While the passengers sat up on the top deck, enjoying the crisp May day through woollen mufflers, Yoshi, the steward, was laying out the buffet, offering drinks and, if the water was choppy, which it was most days now that winter was coming, preparing the disinfectant and bucket for seasickness. It didn’t matter how many times you told them, she grumbled, glancing at the well-dressed Asians who made up most of the morning’s custom, they would stay below decks, they would eat and drink too quickly and they would go into the tiny lavatories to be sick, rather than hanging over the edge, thereby making them unusable by anyone else. And if they were Japanese, she added, with a hint of malicious pleasure, they would spend the rest of the voyage in a silent frenzy of humiliation, hiding behind dark glasses and raised collars, their ashen faces turned resolutely to sea.
‘Tea? Coffee? Biscuits? Tea? Coffee? Biscuits?’
I followed her out on to the foredeck, pulling my windcheater up round my neck. The wind had dropped a little but I could still feel the chill in the air, biting at my nose and the tips of my ears. Most of the passengers didn’t want anything – they were chatting loudly, to be heard above the engines, gazing out at the distant horizon, and taking pictures of each other. Now and then I dipped my hand into the biscuits until I’d taken what I thought they would have eaten anyway.
Moby One was the biggest catamaran – or ‘cat’, as the crews called them – in Silver Bay. It was usually a two-steward vessel, but the tourists were tailing off as the temperature dropped, so it was just Yoshi now until trade picked up again. I didn’t mind – it was easier to persuade her to let me aboard. I helped her put the tea and coffee pots back in their holders, then stepped back out on to the narrow side deck, where we braced ourselves against the windows, and gazed across the sea to where the smaller boat was still making its uneven path across the waves. Even from this distance we could see that more people now were hanging over Suzanne’s rails, their heads lower than their shoulders, oblivious of the spattered red paint just below them. ‘We can take ten minutes now. Here.’ Yoshi cracked open a can of cola and handed it to me. ‘You ever heard of chaos theory?’
‘Mmm.’ I made it sound like I might.
‘If only those people knew,’ she wagged a finger as we felt the engines slow, ‘that their long-awaited trip to go see the wild dolphins has been ruined by an ex-girlfriend they will never meet and a man who now lives with her more than two hundred and fifty kilometres away in Sydney and thinks that purple cycling shorts are acceptable daywear.’
I took a gulp of my drink. The fizz made my eyes water and I swallowed hard. ‘You’re saying the tourists being sick on Greg’s boat is down to chaos theory?’ I’d thought it was because he’d got drunk again the night before.
Yoshi smiled. ‘Something like that.’
The engines had stopped, and Moby One quieted, the sea growing silent around us, except for the tourist chatter and the waves slapping against the sides. I loved it out here, loved watching my house become a white dot against the narrow strip of beach, then disappear behind the endless coves. Perhaps my pleasure was made greater by the knowledge that what I was doing was against the rules. I wasn’t rebellious, not really, but I kind of liked the idea of it.
Lara had a dinghy that she was allowed to take out by herself, staying within the buoys that marked out the old oyster beds, and I envied her. My mother wouldn’t let me roam around the bay, even though I was nearly eleven. ‘All in good time,’ she would murmur. There was no point arguing with her about stuff like that.
Lance appeared beside us: he’d just had his photograph taken with two giggling teenagers. He was often asked to pose with young women, and hadn’t yet been known to refuse. It was why he liked to wear his captain’s peaked cap, Yoshi said, even when the sun was hot enough to melt his head.
‘What’s he written on the side of his boat?’ He squinted at Greg’s cruiser in the distance. He seemed to have forgiven me for being on board.
‘I’ll tell you back at the jetty.’
I caught the eyebrow cocked towards me. ‘I can read what it says, you know,’ I said. The other boat, which had until yesterday described itself as the Sweet Suzanne, now suggested, in red paint, that ‘Suzanne’ do something Yoshi said was a biological impossibility. She turned to him, lowering her voice as far as possible – as if she thought I couldn’t hear her. ‘The missus told him there was another man after all.’
Lance let out a long whistle. ‘He said as much. And she denied it.’
‘She was hardly going to admit it, not when she knew how Greg was going to react. And he was hardly an innocent . . .’ She glanced at me. ‘Anyway, she’s off to live in Sydney, and she said she wants half the boat.’